The first thing, the very first thing he did, was open his eyes and see. See normally, see perfectly, see as well as he had when he had taken his first pilot’s examination. There were colors and shapes and textures that had been but somewhat blurred and idealized memories.
He could see!
And then he had seen her, stirring, trying to get up, and he’d known instantly who she was although he’d never seen her picture or allowed anyone to describe her. He’d known her hair was blond and her eyes were green, and that had been enough.
He’d thought, wonderingly, that she made the most beautiful centauress in all creation.
He also felt the weight and the difficulty in breathing and orientation and hauled himself up to standing at almost the same moment that she did. Standing on all fours, facing her, looking at her, knowing that his prayers had been answered. They were together and of the same kind!
And then she had stared at him, first in awe, then in wonder, and said, “Tony? That can’t beyou, dear, can it?” And she had continued to stare, an expression that was half shock and half bemusement on her pretty face.
“Then—it is true!” he’d responded, his voice sounding very strange to his ears. “Then we are still together! And whole!” He did not care what form they were, human, centaur, crocodile, or swamp rat, only that they were no longer blind or infirm but healthy and still together. Still, he sensed that something was wrong. “What is it, Anne Marie?”
“I’m afraid that we’re a bit more together than either of us thought,” she’d responded hesitantly. “I wish we had a mirror, but, well, look at as much of your new self as you can and be prepared for a bit of a shock.”
“It was the one thing that I, that neither of us, had ever thought about, even considered” Tony continued. “It is still very hard for me. Not for Anne Marie, I don’t believe. Not really. As before, she sees more inside a person than the surface. But for me, and the culture in which I was raised, it is much, much harder. I think it gives the old term ‘soul mates’ a whole new meaning, does it not?”
Julian could think of a lot worse fates, but needing sympathy, she decided not to deny it to another. Still, she really thought he was lacking a lot of perspective. “It could have been much worse. Both of you as females of my race, for example. Or the ultimate fear you mentioned—that you would be of two species monstrous to one another. I of all people understand your shock, but I would trade with you in a moment.”
“Oh, I do not doubt that!” Tony responded. “And I sympathize. Still, hormones can only account for so much of anyone’s behavior, true? Otherwise, why do both of you have minds and wills? Both you and Lori must learn to control your new selves. The real problem is that you see yourself in your husband because you grew up a man, and you see yourself as the equivalent of how you perceived those young girls who threw themselves at you in your youth. Neither of us grew up female. Neither of us has the grounding of experience in the differences that brings, so we do not know how to cope. You yield because you do not know how to defend as she would. I fight when I should yield because my subjective universe was far more rigidly divided sexually than yours by my culture and upbringing. You are in despair because you cannot be her, and you cannot be your old self, and you do not have the experience or tools to be someone new. I—I can accept this. I was, after all, prepared to die with her, and I find some old prejudices crumbling now, the most basic of which is that it really does not feel that much different to be a woman. The problem is not with the body but with the mind, with needing a whole new frame of reference—not just accepting it and living with it myself but accepting the way others now perceive me and react and interact with me.”
“You mean the way men treat you.”
“No, I mean the way all others treat me. The way men look at me even when they are being nice, the very words and approach they take when speaking to me, the way certain conversations are closed to me now. And it is not just the men. The women react differently as well. As I am certain you know, a conversation strictly among women is quite different from one between men or between men and women.”
“You can say that again,” Julian agreed.
“So it is a matter of learning the rules, as it were. But I can no longer be Tony, the old Tony. Not like this. Not even to her. And I do not know how to be anything else, particularly with her. And that is something that I understand and she, not having been male, cannot yet grasp. I can be her—sister, her best friend, but I can no longer be her husband.”
“Maybe. Maybe you’re right. We’ve all got a lot to learn.” She decided that this was enough mutual wallowing for now. What Tony had said was true, but it was damned hard to feel sorry for the centauress when she would sell her soul to be either one of them. “On the other hand, this Mavra Chang is something else, isn’t she? She reminds me of a couple of women astronauts I trained with. Tough, knowledgeable, able to handle almost anything or anyone no matter what her size and sex, but still undeniably feminine.”
“She is indeed someone quite unusual,” Tony agreed. “I can only hope that toughness rubs off on the rest of us.”
“Um, I’m curious,” Julian said cautiously. “Is this what Anne Marie says she looked like? I mean, are you now a clone of her?”
“Clone is a good term,” Tony replied. “We are clones of a sort—they were so amazed at us that they sent us off to a hospital and took samples, which, I believe, were sent out to one of the high-tech lands. I believe the interest was in the fact that we even had the same fingerprints. Even identical twins do not quite have that. We are genetically absolutely identical. Only the personalities and experiences are different, and that makes quite a difference indeed.”
That was fascinating but not the answer to the question. “No, I mean, do you look like she used to? I know you said you didn’t want to have her described, I assume so you could hold a mental picture, but surely she’s said something now.”
“Oh, I see. No, we do not look like she used to. In fact, I can see something of my mother and one of my own sisters in us. I think that somehow, we were designed out of the genetic patterns of her mother and my maternal chromosome. Or so it was theorized. We are a combination of the pattern and look of the best of both of us. As for the horse part, well, I have never seen a horse built quite like this, with such style and grace, as it were, looking at her and thus myself from my old male vantage point, but I am certain that wherever it comes from, it is not in either of our ancestries.”
Julian chuckled, then suddenly realized that it was the first time she had laughed at all on the Well World. Tony had at least a sense of humor about things, and that was what would certainly pull her through to some solution to her own inner conflict. The Erdomese could use something to laugh about, but there had been little to do up to now.
Anne Marie came over to them. “Oh, I’d hoped you two would get along!” she gushed. “Tony has been too much in a shell since all this, haven’t you, dear? I, on the other hand, have been quite excited by it all. I’ve done more and seen more in the past few months than I had ever dreamed to do in a lifetime! I find everything here so frightfully fascinating!”
Julian wondered if that sense of adventure would last if they got into a really bad situation. She couldn’t imagine that Anne Marie could kill a fly willfully and with malice aforethought.
The train ran silently along on a magnetic track, levitating just above the surface. There was no engineer, no crew; the entire process was automated, and each car could be switched in and out at will or become part of a new train at almost every junction. They’d gone through a large number of such junctions, when everything slowed to a crawl and pieces of train were diverted, some were added, some were taken away on spurs or alternate tracks, and a new train was put together. It was a marvel of efficiency and served the hex well.
Now they slowed for one more switching yard and in a matter of minutes watched the long train divide into five separate sections and go off in all direction
s. There was a slight bump as their own car was joined to other sections old and new, and then everything speeded up once more. It was a few minutes after this that Mavra Chang had the odd feeling that something wasn’t right. At first she couldn’t put her finger on it, and she began to inventory her surroundings to see what it was that was setting off warnings in the danger-sensing area of her brain. The car was the same; the other cars were innocuous enough, and the surroundings looked little different from what they had looked like before. What was the problem?
She was almost ready to dismiss her feeling as being too jumpy when suddenly she had it. The sun!
They had been going generally due west. Now, suddenly, the sun was not behind them as it should have been in late afternoon with the Well World’s west-east rotation, but on their left. They were still going west, but it was now south-southwest. Clearly the car was no longer heading for the port at all. Something, or someone, had ordered them diverted.
“Everybody! Listen up!” she shouted. “Lori, wake up! We’ve got trouble!”
Lori stirred and shook his head to clear it. “Huh? What?”
“They’ve switched us south onto another line,” she told them as they gathered around the tiny woman.
“’They’?” Lori asked. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“If I knew that for sure, I could deal with them!” Mavra snapped. “Never mind that now. Somebody with influence who definitely doesn’t want me to get up to the Well first, that’s for sure. Anybody here a good judge of land speed? About what speed do you think this car is making now?”
It was Julian who spoke up. “At its maximum, no more than two hundred kilometers an hour,” she stated with a certainty that surprised them. “At average, about one hundred forty.”
“That’s a fair enough estimate,” Mavra responded, impressed.
“You were never in astronaut training.”
“That’s right! I’d forgotten you were a spacer! Okay, and according to this cheap watch I bought months ago, we’ve been going for three and a half hours. That would mean we’re about two-thirds of the way, or were when we were switched. At the angle we’re now traveling, if it stays fairly constant, we’ll still reach the coast, but way, way south of where we want to be. There’s only one decent harbor on the west coast, or so I’m told; the coastal waters are otherwise too shallow. Mostly small towns along there dependent on rail. I’d say that they’re aiming to bring us in down there at one of the small towns on the southwest border, maybe the southernmost one, at or after dusk.”
“But why? That’s the question,” Lori said, frowning.
“That’s easy enough. We miss our ship, we’ve got a long, slow walk up, since we can’t trust the trains anymore, and we’re in the kind of area where we always will stick out like sore thumbs.”
“But we can’t walk, not in this humidity and gravity!” Julian protested. “At least I can’t!”
“This is not as much of a problem for us,” Tony pointed out. “If need be, I could carry you and Mavra, too, and I am certain that Anne Marie could carry Lori.”
“Of course,” the other centauress replied. “It is a bit more difficult for us, and we have to go slower because of the burden on these thin legs, but you would hardly add to the burden.”
Mavra shook her head. “Uh uh. We might do that for a short distance but not a long one. Not only do I want out of here, I want to get lost. At least to whoever’s behind this. And the last thing I want to do is make a grand march under these conditions to a place where somehow I know they won’t have a ship for us.”
“But what is the alternative?” Tony asked her.
“If we keep going this way, we’ll come in to the southwesternmost yard in a small town almost at the Gekir border. Gekir’s a nontech hex and I’ve never been there, but my experience has been that if you want to get lost, get into a nontech hex. No mass transportation, but no mass communications, either. Nontechs are also the most dangerous for a lot of reasons, but while I don’t remember much about them, what was said indicates that the Gekir are not a mean or hostile people, and there’s some trade between there and Itus. As to what kind of creatures they are, I haven’t a clue, even though we might or might not have seen them among the races back in the capital. If we’re lucky, there might be some kind of sailing vessels that call along the coast. It’s worth a try.”
“But if whoever is chasing you is influential enough to divert our railcar, they will have people watching out for us at the town, won’t they?” Julian asked worriedly.
“Yes, so we’ll have to get off before that point and avoid the town. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. They’re bound to have a decoupling yard just before the town to route the various cars to loading areas. When the train slows, we get off, fast. It’ll still be moving, so watch yourselves, but it should be moving at a crawl, at least up to the switch. Tony, I assume you and Anne Marie could jump off.”
“I don’t think that would be a problem, but we’ll have to time it right,” Tony replied. “I don’t think either of us should risk a broken ankle at this point, and the heavier gravity is a major threat. Wait a moment! Anne Marie, come give me a hand here.”
The two centauresses went over to the left side and studied the short staked fence. “They look just placed in,” Anne Marie said, and with both hands tried to pry one up. She tried as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t budge. “No go, I’m afraid, dear.”
Tony got close beside her. “Both of us together, then.”
They tried, but it was as if the panel were welded on.
Julian came over and looked at the panel as well, bending down to see what might be holding it in. “I think it’s more magnets,” she said at last. “This train runs on the basis of magnetic polarity. There are two strong electromagnets underneath, one the track and the other on the undercarriage. When power is applied, they repel, we float essentially friction-free, and by moving one set, speed can be quickly achieved or slowed, even stopped on a dime. But the stakes, I bet, are matched to the polarity of the undercarriage. When it’s powered, they’re pulled tight.” She thought a moment. “I wonder if there are any dead spots.”
“Dead spots?” one of them asked.
“Yes. Have you ever ridden on a subway—underground, metro, or whatever—or an electric-powered train? There’s often points where the track is either not powered because of some repair or connector or the power source changes. The lights might flicker or even go off, but it’s brief and the train’s forward momentum keeps it rolling until it gets to the next powered section. I thought I felt a slight loosening at one point while I was leaning on it here, and there were the vibrations rattling the stakes briefly, but then it was tight again. If there’s another, then in that brief moment this panel should be able to be pulled. If it’s really held by the electromagnets, that is.”
“There is only one way to find out,” Tony said. “I will just stand here and pull on it and see.”
Although it was a rather simple explanation of the principle, Lori found himself momentarily taken aback by Julian’s sophisticated knowledge, even though he knew her background. He hadn’t been used to her being very assertive of late, and it gave him oddly mixed feelings he neither liked nor wanted to deal with. Julian had come up almost effortlessly with the solution to a problem of the sort that only seemed obvious when it was explained. The rattling had happened every few minutes off and on since they boarded, yet only Julian had put it together. Although he was quite proud of her, the two warring halves of his nature could not have been more divided on interpretation. The Lori Sutton part was cheering; the Lori of Alkhaz part was furious that she’d just given it to them all rather than tell him in private so that he could bring it up to the group.
Several minutes passed, and a bored Tony, feeling circulation going in her arms, was just about to give it up when suddenly the panel came up and she staggered back a bit, barely keeping balance. It didn’t come all the way out but was now held only by two flat pins,
no longer flush with the flatcar floor.
“If need be, I could probably kick it down at this point,” Tony commented, “but I think that Lori might do better pushing up from beneath. Just be sure you don’t fall off the train when it comes up!”
Lori looked at it dubiously. “Yeah, right,” he said, but lay down, got his body in as close as he could with his legs well beyond the almost-free panel, and pushed against the very solid-feeling section.
When the moment came, tense as he was, the panel almost did take him with it; it flew up and away, and he suddenly felt himself going forward into the opening. Only Anne Marie’s strong hands grabbing his legs and bringing him back in saved him, and, being hauled back on his stomach, he was suddenly very thankful he’d kept wearing the hardened codpiece.
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